


sing me simple, sing me blue

by yourhandiheld



Series: it takes two to tango (and four to make this home) [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, liverpepper au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 14:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17346962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourhandiheld/pseuds/yourhandiheld
Summary: Cloud remembers things and then forgets them. (And then remembers, and forgets, and remembers, and forgets, and—)set in the liverpepper au.





	sing me simple, sing me blue

**Author's Note:**

> at first there was going to be a point to this fic, but then i just decided i wanted to write about cloud. so here we are! i jump around ages a lot, and the timeline is pretty vague at best, so please forgive me!! (but do let me know what you think<3) set in the [liverpepper au](https://liverpepper.tumblr.com), as usual!

For two weeks in the fall, Sora slipped into their bed quiet as a mouse.  
  
“Back again?” Cloud said. He held a rubik’s cube in his hands, partially solved, and abandoned it to the night table by his side as Sora navigated across his legs towards the center of the bed.  
  
Sora pushed his lips out; it was difficult to tell from the dim light of the corner lamp whether he was resolutely pouting or trying not to pout. “Weird dreams again.” He conquered the mess of blanket and let Cloud tuck him more comfortably in. To Sora’s right, Squall’s breaths came slow and steady, a metronome in the dark.  
  
“You can pinch his nose if he’s being too loud,” Cloud suggested, just to make Sora giggle. And he did. The delight in his voice suggested any trace of a nightmare had left him, if he’d had one at all. For all Cloud knew, it might have been habit rather than fear that brought him over.  
  
“He’ll get mad,” Sora whispered, still giggling. His fingernail was stubby and bitten, pressed by the side to his lips.  
  
Cloud quieted obediently, lifting his finger to his mouth as well. He lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t dare.”  
  
Sora held up two index fingers, waggling them like a stick. “Why not?”  
  
Cloud spoke more quietly still. “‘Cause I’ll put him in time out if he does.”  
  
His shriek of delight erupted so suddenly that Cloud wished for more light, for cameras in both hands.  
  
The twins were still young, still only boys with high pitched voices and tiny hands and graceless limbs, but there was a part of him that could have rivaled Squall for the ache in his chest that appeared any time he thought about them growing. Like this, Sora still marveled at the little things. He was always so good—The Goodest, so he proclaimed, so _everyone_ proclaimed—and unlike Roxas with his tantrums, hadn’t yet done anything to deserve the time out corner with Cloud.  
  
“Wouldja?” Sora breathed.  
  
“Want me to?”  
  
“But what can he do?”  
  
“Oh,” whispered Cloud. “Plenty.”  
  
Sora idolized Squall. Even in the dark, Cloud could see it, the love there. Like stars in his eyes.  
  
“Now I really can’t sleep!”       
  
For ten minutes Sora couldn’t hold himself still, giggling himself silly with the thought of his dad in his and Roxas’s little plastic chair. Cloud pulled him closer. Breathed in the clean smell of his hair. Sora koala-clung to Cloud’s chest and blew a raspberry into his skin. He was five now, and so little. Still Cloud held him like he was still newly born, and pressed his cheek to the top of his head.  
  
“Close your eyes and think of something nice.”  
  
“You too, papa?”  
  
Cloud nodded. He counted the seconds until Sora’s breathing slowed, and counted for a little longer after that. He thought absently of the beach. A field blooming with flowers. Roxas blowing dandelion seeds into the air. Before long, morning broke and with it, birdsong and Sora’s laughter.  
  
“Time-out, time-out!” he shrieked.  
  
Squall, still slumbering, grunted and shrunk beneath the sheets. Cloud patted Sora’s hair then walked with him to the kitchen.  
  
“Now,” he said, after fetching a bleary-eyed Roxas and keeping him hefted on a hip. “Why on earth would you want to be put in time out?”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Cloud remembered their first night away from Squall with startling clarity.  
  
It was Yuffie’s fault, of course. Only Yuffie could have managed to flood her apartment like that. Without hesitation she yelled through the phone for Squall to come and Do Something About It Puhleeeeeeeeze!! Squall had said Of course, though there probably wasn’t much he could do, but again, Of course, then drove to go help her anyway and now was stuck there for the night.  
  
Cloud had asked him without trying very hard to conceal a snicker if everything was all right, if Squall wasn’t too miserable.  
  
“Fuck, no,” Squall spat. The sheer force of his disgust made the line crackle. He rarely swore thusly, was often the one who shook his head at Cloud’s potty mouth, and the change in pace inspired an immovable upward quirk of the lips on Cloud’s part. “I’m soaking wet, the floor’s filthy, I reek—“  
  
“—you always sort of do,” Cloud said consolingly, as Roxas insistently tugged on the leg of his pants, reaching for the receiver. “Here, Rox wants to say—“  
  
“—Where are you!” Roxas demanded. He was still so little he had to hold the phone with both hands. “It’s nighttime, and you have to check on the boogeyman!”  
  
Beside him, Sora, though affected by sleepiness, nodded with a similar sort of determination. They pushed their cheeks together and huffed and puffed at the phone.  
  
“But you’re too old for sleepovers!” Sora complained.  
  
“Papa agrees, right?”  
  
There was little Cloud could do against such wide, blue eyes. “Well, your daddy ought to know he should’ve asked for permission first.”  
  
“See?” said Roxas.  
  
“See! You didn’t ask for our per-mi-shun!” Sora nodded, and kept nodding, until whatever Squall said caused his face to fall ever so. “But,” he said, “But—“  
  
“Fine,” Roxas said, wetly. It was rare for him to decide for the both of them, but Sora followed after him. Soon they were mumbling their goodbyes and goodnights, and soon Roxas’s voice wobbled in a dangerous way.  
  
“Gotta go,” Cloud said, scooping up Roxas and the receiver both. “Change in forecast, I think. Try to get some sleep?”  
  
“If I can find a change of clothes,” muttered Squall, still despondently.  
  
“So sleep in your birthday suit.”  
  
“At Yuffie’s?”  
  
“Doors exist, you big—" Roxas shot him a dirty look, ever on the lookout for swear words ever since Cid taught them his share of favorites. “—Pussycat.”  
  
“Pussycat?”  
  
“Goodnight, Squall,” Cloud said, swallowing down a laugh. “Boys, say goodnight to your dad again?”  
  
The farewells lasted longer than a minute; Roxas indeed began to cry, as he was still wont to do, and whenever Roxas cried like that Squall felt bad, even if he didn’t say so.  
  
“You can sleep in our bed tonight, if you want,” Cloud told them gently, after he ran them a bath.  
  
“No-o,” Roxas insisted, sniffling still. “We’re big boys. An’ Naminé says she sleeps in her bed every night, an’ I’m pretty sure Riku does too, an’—“  
  
And when Sora said so, agreeing more cheerfully, that was the end of that. Tucked into their beds, Cloud dutifully left their night lights on and kept the door cracked open just the way they liked it. Before he left, he walked their room in a circuit; first he checked their closet, looked it left to right, nodding here and there; then he checked behind the door, beneath the boys’ hung bathrobes and umbrellas; then got carefully on his knees to look under their beds.  
  
“All clear,” he said to Sora, then after inspecting the space beneath Roxas’s, “Double all clear.”  
  
Roxas was little more than a tuft of hair, mostly hidden beneath his blanket. “Did daddy teach you that?”  
  
“We learned together,” Cloud said, and kissed that messy tuft until Roxas revealed more of himself, brave enough to offer both of his cheeks for Cloud to kiss twicely.  
  
“You remembered how?” Sora asked him, agape with awe.  
  
“Couldn’t forget that,” Cloud said, kissing him just the same.  
  
Sora beamed to mimic the sun. Cloud learned that Sora liked that, hearing about the things Cloud remembered. He was still too little to really understand that things were more fuzzy than forgotten, and always took Cloud’s remembrance of things as victories to be celebrated, indicators of Cloud’s eventual invincibility. Cloud liked the thought of that, being invincible.  
  
In the nighttime, Sora crept into his room, and for the first time, Sora’d had to wake him.  
  
It never mattered to him what age the boys were or what time they came to him; at the sound of Sora’s wet hiccups, Cloud moved on autopilot. He flicked the light on and ushered Sora beneath the sheets, all with his eyes still closed.  
  
Beside him Sora shook and trembled. Cloud’s heart responded by cartwheeling messily into his rib cage. “Bad dream?”  
  
“R-r-really bad.” But now it wasn’t the nightmare that prompted tears; “I’m s-s-sorry I woke you,” Sora bawled. Cloud’s heart cracked right open.  
  
“I wasn’t very asleep,” Cloud lied, pulling him closer. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”  
  
“Mm-m,” Sora said. He was already so little, but all weighed down by fear he made himself even smaller. “D’you know daddy’s sp-sp-spell? For the bad dreams?”  
  
Cloud did. It was a silly variation of the simplest lullaby, and Squall never sang it in front of him. Only Cloud was a light sleeper, and sometimes Squall forgot that, so he’d heard it once or twice, murmured softly from down the hall. “Sing it with me?” Cloud said. “That way we’re two to cast the spell. It'll be even stronger.”  
  
“Okay,” Sora agreed.  
  
It was late enough—abrupt enough—that the darkness from the window and the stillness of the night made it hard for Cloud to discern the details of what was going on. He just knew that Squall wasn’t here—because of water, or Yuffie, or water and Yuffie—and that Sora was still perfectly sized to fit against him, whatever age that meant—only he knew that once woke up some more, he’d recall these things and remember them better for later. But there were more important things than details. Sora still trembled, and his heart continued to squeeze in his chest.  
  
“Hush little baby listen well, papa’s come to sing you a magic spell.”  
  
“My dream is a big ol’ st-st-storm today,” Sora sang, stuttering bravely through a shudder. Tears caught on his lashes, then plipped off down his cheek. Cloud chased them with his thumb and kissed their damp tracks away.  
  
He held Sora curled into him. He found the rhythm of Sora’s heartbeat, a tiny quivering thing. “But papa’s come to chase all your clouds away,” Cloud sang back.  
  
The rhythm of Sora’s breathing found a gentler pattern. His breath hitched and caught in the usual after-cry way.  
  
“Feeling better?” Cloud asked him.  
  
Sora nodded.  
  
“Want me to call dad?”  
  
Sora shook his head. He curled his fingers into Cloud’s shirt, and tucked himself with finality. “No thank-you,” he said, yawning sweetly. “You made my sky all blue.”

 

-

  
  
One evening, surrounded by their college friends, Cloud felt himself blink awake.  
  
“—and I was just saying that! Exactly! Isn’t that right, Partly Cloudy?”  
  
Cloud blinked again. “Sorry?”  
  
Irvine sat blurred—except that he wasn’t, was he?—across from him, pointing a finger here and there. “I said, no one expected Leon of all people to drop out too!”  
  
“Leon?” Cloud said, slightly slurred, frowning. “I don’t know a—“  
  
A hand found his, and it was Squall’s hand—he knew it from the calluses on those fingertips, knew it from the warmth of the skin—and squeezed his gently.  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Squall said. “It’s only a nickname. A stupid one.”  
  
“Do I know a Leon?” A cold and uncertain feeling began to seize him. “That’s you, isn’t it? Did I forget that?”  
  
“Oh, shit,” Irvine said, eyes wide with apology. “Aw, Cloud, I didn’t mean to—“  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Squall said again, so calmly it stilled cloud's fledgling anxiety.  
  
Cloud began to tremble, suddenly cold. Squall removed his jacket without a word and placed it over his shoulders.  
  
“I didn’t realize that still happened,” Irvine whispered urgently to Tifa, who shushed him and shoved a drink his way. “Did I do that?”  
  
“Happens sometimes,” Squall said, speaking up. “I said don’t worry about it.”  
  
“I don’t,” Cloud said, heavy-lidded. “I don’t.”  
  
“We can head home if you want,” Squall said, finding his hand again. “Just say the word.”  
  
Cloud blinked again, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring out a car window, and the sky had the most beautiful flecks of orange in it. “We can go now,” he slurred. “I think, I—“  
  
Squall was at the wheel. His hand still held Cloud’s, and he squeezed it again, exactly the same. “You got it,” he said. And the sun outside sloped slowly down.  
  
  
-  
  
  
Cloud was good with kids but Vanitas and Ven liked Squall better.  
  
“Don’t see why,” Squall said, nonplussed by Vanitas’s hollered declaration.  
  
“Just yell back thank you and be done with it,” Cloud said, glancing towards the playground. Vanitas was dangling himself upside-down from the monkey bars, smiling to split his face. Cloud knew that grin; it meant Vanitas would stay there, hanging just like that, until Squall acknowledged him, nevermind that his face was beginning to go red and he was likely already beginning to feel lightheaded.  
  
“Thank you, Vanitas, Ventus,” Squall yelled, though his voice came out more a sigh. He turned back to Cloud, who was engrossed in an old harlequin Tifa’d given him about a crocodile hunter and his well-endowed crocodile huntress. “Like I said, I don’t see why. Look at you, you came all the way here with all...” he paused, indicating something. “...that still on you.”  
  
“It’s only face paint, Squall.”  
  
It was; half of his face was done up to look like Scooby-doo, while the other half was presumably a mix of Spongebob and Squidward both. Squall’d tried to scrub at his cheek, but Cloud ducked away every time; it would’ve upset Roxas, which was never something he wanted to put up with while Ventus and Vanitas were over.  
  
“Pretty sure those freckles were done in sharpie,” Squall said, squinting at him.  
  
“Then I’ll go to work as a very handsome Spongebob tomorrow.”  
  
“See? You let them terrorize you. They should like you better. It’s a ridiculous thing to yell.”  
  
“They’re not terrorizing me if I let them,” Cloud said, patiently. “And I let them because I like it.”  
  
“You like it?”  
  
Cloud shrugged. “S’kind of like a massage.”  
  
“On your face?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Unbelievable.”  
  
Up on the playground, Ventus made a train of Sora and Roxas, sat himself at the very back behind them, and eased the three of them down the winding slide that Roxas was once afraid of.  
  
“Was that Roxas?” Squall wondered.  
  
“Course it was. Sora loved going down that thing. Still does. Remember? Riku said, ‘Come on, we’ll go together!’ and Kairi said she wanted to go first, so Sora said—“  
  
“—Sora said, ‘me second, ‘cause second is the best’,” Squall sighed. “And then he slid down so fast he fell right off and into the sand, and it got in his eyes, and he freaked out for a sec. Right.”  
  
Cloud shrugged again. “Wasn’t freaked out for long. Kairi laughed, which made him laugh. Roxas cried harder. He thought Sora got his face scratched off by the sand.”  
  
“How the hell do you remember these things? We’re at the park nearly every day. Pretty sure I start tuning things out unless they yell for me.”  
  
”Un-cle Squ-AAAALL,” shrieked Vanitas. Now he dangled with his feet through the loops. “I’m gonna teach Sora and Roxas how to do this! You okay with that?”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Squall yelled back. “Vanitas—“  
  
But Vanitas had already touched down gracefully on the sand, laughing so hard he held his stomach. “Ven,” he said, “Ven, c’mon, help me lift them up, it’ll scare the jeebus out of him.”  
  
In the distance Ventus shook his head no, and Vanitas said Aw, come ON Ven, you’re such a spoilsport, and Cloud knew if he had his head turned Ven might’ve made a rude gesture with his hand.  
  
“See?” Cloud said.  
  
“See what?”  
  
“Jesus, Squall, you weren’t listening?”  
  
“To what?”  
  
Cloud nearly laughed. “You really do tune them out? Just like that? Holy shit.”  
  
“If I had to listen to every little thing they said over there—“  
  
“Then you’d know exactly why Vanitas likes you better.”  
  
“Enlighten me.”  
  
Cloud pinched him instead. He took Squall’s hand afterward, laced their fingers together, shoved their clasped hands into the pocket of his sweater. “I may have swiss cheese for brains—“  
  
“—When on earth have I ever said that about you?”  
  
“— _I’m_ saying that. About me. Holey memory, you know?”  
  
“Positively Saintlike,” Squall said, frowning. “And you don’t—  
  
“—And I do,” Cloud said, firmly. “I may remember fuck all at the worst of times, but there’s a reason I’m the champion dad between the two of us.”  
  
Squall pinched the bridge of his nose. “And why is that?”  
  
“Un-cle SQUALL!” screeched Vanitas.  
  
“Don’t listen to him,” yelled Ventus in a louder voice, as Roxas and Sora ran circles around them, shrieking with glee. “He’s lying—Uncle Squall he’s LYING!”  
  
“—Ven fed them bugs, Ven fed them bugs!”  
  
“—I didn’t, I didn’t, I swear!”  
  
Cloud let go of Squall’s hand, nudged him off the bench and pushed him off towards the kids with a firm pat on the ass. “Because unlike you, I’m impossible to annoy.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
They disagreed on a fair amount of things but in truth fought rarely. That was just how it was between the two of them, even at the very beginning. Their spats—when they had them—were cavernous and loomed for uncomfortable lengths of time, though for the most part were laden with silences more than yells.  
  
So in October, when Cloud had had enough of Squall brooding at and around him, dizzy with a headache that’d been plaguing him for days on account of a bad flareup, he stole away Sora and Roxas’s pile of papers from school and didn’t let Squall touch them.  
  
“What the hell?”  
  
“No,” Cloud snapped, when Squall reached over to snatch them back. “I’m sick, not incapacitated.”  
  
“When did I ever say you were?”  
  
Squall hadn’t, but the way he was acting, Cloud couldn’t help but feel prickly and irritated, little more than useless. The whole of the week was a blur to him, mostly flashes of spots and cut-up lapses of time. That was just the way it was sometimes. He knew Squall must’ve been the one handling the boys’ homework—because that was how it was— and must also have been taking care of the missives back and forth between parent-and-teacher—because, well.  
  
Vaguely he recalled a misty morning, because Sora had bounced into their bed and yelled It’s froggy outside! and Squall had shushed him and said, still quietly, You mean foggy? and Sora’d hopped out, crouched over on his hands and knees, just like a frog.  
  
Even more vaguely he recalled waking up in the dead of the night, nauseated to the point of vomiting. How he’d made it to the bathroom, he had no idea, though there was something nice about the way Squall’s fingers felt cool against his skin, even if that he came a bit too late. Cloud’s hair already stunk of puke, though Squall must’ve helped wash it afterwards, because Squall was always gentle that way. Only after that, Squall had stopped being so helpful and started—started—  
  
“Started what?” Squall asked him.  
  
“Being an asshole!”  
  
Squall had the nerve to look taken aback. That was when Roxas poked into the kitchen and, as disparagingly as any eight year old could, muttered, “Papa, you said a bad word.”  
  
“Well,” Cloud said, unable to refute it.  
  
“Hafta say sorry,” Roxas ordered.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Cloud said, firmly unapologetically.  
  
Brightly now, Roxas pointed to the paper pile. “Good! Now you gotta let dad sign those papers or else me and Sora can’t go to the fieldtrip with everyone else.”  
  
“Sora and I,” corrected Squall.  
  
“Sora and I,” Roxas sighed, dragging out the sound. “Will you please sign them now?”  
  
“You gonna eat all your greens at dinner tonight?”  
  
“I—“  
  
Squall leveled him with a look.  
  
“Fi-ine,” said Roxas, drooping slightly.  
  
“If you do, I’ll sign the forms and let you have extra ice cream.”  
  
Roxas brightened just like that. It was hard not to stay upset with Squall when he found ways to reason with Roxas, who could be difficult even on a good day. “Thanks, dad!” he said, then raced out of the room, whooping about ice cream.  
  
And there Cloud caught it.  
  
It was only a little thing. Anybody else would have missed it. But Cloud—Cloud knew all of Squall’s expressions, had probably mentally documented each and every one of Squall’s minute reactions to things, that his eyes were drawn to the change on his face like a beacon.  
  
“You’re upset,” Cloud said, with realization. From the slight crease that left as suddenly as it had appeared in between Squall’s eyebrows alone, Cloud could tell he’d hit the nail right on its proverbial head. He couldn’t help the mirth from coloring his voice, and set the pair of binders he was holding briefly back down on the table. “Wait—because of him?”  
  
“The forms,” pressed Squall, tightly.  
  
“You’re upset because he called you _dad?”_  
  
Squall made a swipe for the boys’ red and blue binders. Cloud held himself angled so that Squall’s fingers could do little more than scrape along the rigid edge of their spines.  
  
“Squall, holy shit. You’re serious?”  
  
“About getting those forms back? Yeah.”  
  
Which meant, of course, that he was. And suddenly, like a switch or a button or a start-of-the-day blink, Cloud could play everything back with unhindered clarity. He saw the gaps in his memory and could tell what went exactly where. Squall was the most serious person he knew, and so unfaltering was his solemnity that it stamped itself onto every little thing he did.  
  
So when he sulked in the car on Monday morning as they dropped the boys off—  
  
And when Roxas shushed him several days ago, eyes glued to the television screen—  
  
And on Wednesday when Sora said, “Da-a-ad, papa already said we could! Didntcha, paw-puuuuuh!”—  
  
“You mean to say,” Cloud struggled between wheezes of laughter, “that all this time I thought you were pissed I’d forgotten something, when really you’re upset because you think you’ve been demoted?”  
  
“Jesus,” said Squall, ears glowing faintly pink.  
  
“You think dad is a demotion? Seriously? Holy shit. I gotta call Cid.”  
  
Squall must have forgotten about the forms, busy now with racing to beat Cloud to the phone. He gripped the receiver tightly, kept it forcibly pressed to its cradle. “What are you, five?”  
  
“When did you stop calling him Daddy? Did you ever call Cid that? Wait, what do you even call him again?”  
  
_“Cloud.”_  
  
Cloud laughed until his shoulders shook. “Ok, ok—I’m done. Promise.”  
  
For a second Squall doubted him. He kept his hand on the phone until Cloud raised both of his in surrender. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”  
  
“What’s that? You love me?”  
  
“Whatever,” Squall said, brooding slightly.  
  
He hadn’t laughed like that in days, and it took all the strength clean out of his limbs. Cloud ambled over to a chair, plopped right into it, and felt instantly lighter. Squall, still flushing, kept his eyes down, either reading or pretending to read through the permission slips.  
  
“You know, sometimes they call me Cloud.”  
  
Terror briefly crossed Squall’s face. “Never gonna happen.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
One August, Cloud got Squall to stay up late enough to catch the Perseids with him. The boys were too young for its peak hours, nevermind that they lived so close to the city that even at the best of times they hardly saw a thing, but Cloud’d been poorly lately and Squall was always easiest to goad into his whims whenever Cloud was recovering.  
  
Squall kissed him in the dark, beneath a rustle of leaves. There were bumps on his skin, freshly bitten by mosquitoes.  
  
“Want me to scratch’em?” Cloud asked him.  
  
“Probably best you didn’t,” Squall said.  
  
Cloud did anyway. He dragged the blunt of his bitten fingernails this way and that just to hear a keen form at the base of Squall’s throat. Squall had always had more self-control than him. He held Cloud’s hands flattened between his own whenever Cloud said his sores itched something awful. Cloud, though, possessed none of that sang-froid. His fingers crawled up, poked through the neck of Squall’s t-shirt, and lingered gently crooked in his hair. Then he kissed the spot beneath Squall’s adam’s apple, where his voice remained hidden, barely a trill, just because he could.  
  
“Think we should head back in? Doesn’t seem like we’ll be seeing much this year.”  
  
Squall shook his head, kissed him summer-sweetly, then repositioned them both so that they lay facing each other on their sides. “Do you ever?”  
  
“Did once. When Zack and I went for a road trip to the boonies a couple years back.”  
  
Squall snorted. “Nibelheim?”  
  
“Say what you want about Nibelheim, but at least the sky there’s clear.”  
  
“Whatever. Wasn’t ever much of a stargazer anyway. Never did like laying on grass.”  
  
“You never did like a lot of things.”  
  
The stars above them were bright. The moon, large and perfectly-shaped, was even more luminous. It shone enough for Cloud to spy two errant ants marching up along the curve of Squall’s elbow.  
  
“Remember fifth grade?”  
  
It was an eternity ago. In fifth grade, he was ten years old and new in town. Knew only Zack. Fifth grade was holes and odd skips in time. Tifa might’ve been the first person who spoke to him in class. Her hair was shiny and black and she wore it interestingly-tied. Or perhaps she wore it long and loose; it was hard to tell. Too many things escaped him.  
  
“Mm,” Cloud said, vaguely. Squall wore his hair short these days, and so feathered was his fringe that strands lingered in front of his eyes, obscuring them unjustly. “Remind me anyway.”  
  
“I was an asshole,” Squall said, thinking about it.  
  
“Was?”  
  
”Well. More of an asshole.”  
  
“More of?”  
  
“Whatever. Shut up.”  
  
But he wasn’t upset; a half-smile lingered on his face, and his eyes fell slowly shut from whatever memory he was replaying in his head. For a second, Cloud wished he could slip inside of him, share the same skin. Squall could close his eyes and instead of darkness, Cloud would see a pool of memories. Bits and pieces of their shared childhood. The great big dog Squall owned when he was little. Something complete, and whole, without blurs at the edges.  
  
“You sat way in the back. Middle row, I think. Never paid attention. Didn’t like me much.”  
  
“Squall, no one liked you much.”  
  
“Your hair was long enough to tie into—do you remember? That stupid ponytail you always had?” Squall chuckled low, and the movement dislodged an ant from his skin by accident. Cloud rolled his eyes, plucked for it between blades of grass to redeposit it beside its friend.  
  
“You don’t see me making fun of you for your old hairdos.”  
  
“Bullshit. In college—“  
  
“—you had a mullet. It’s just facts, Leonhart. Get over it. And go back to fifth grade.”  
  
“What, right now? Don’t think I’d fit in with the class much. Might be a bit too tall.”  
  
Cloud hit him. Squall laughed this time, turned so he was on his back. His eyes faced skyward, and like this, Cloud could see the moon perfectly reflected in them.  
  
“I was trying, you know. To find something to tell you. Something interesting I guess.”  
  
“The fact that you can remember it at all is interesting enough. Say anything. What were you thinking about when you brought it up?”  
  
“Nothing really,” Squall said. He didn’t look at him when he said it; kept staring up at the stars. “Only that I don’t think it’s so bad, if the memories are all blurry.”  
  
Something inside of Cloud swelled. “How so?”  
  
“We weren’t friends back then,” Squall said, with honesty. “I like where we are now.”  
  
“Oh,” Cloud said, reeling slightly.  
  
After some heartbeats they pushed themselves back up and made their way back inside. They tread lightly, on the tips of their toes. The door to the boys’ room was cracked wide open, light pouring and bouncing off the walls in star-shapes and dancing dolphins. Squall remained at the doorway for a breath, the way he did every night.  
  
“You and I were this little once. I never knew you then.”  
  
Squall had a thing about littleness. Equal parts fascination and fear.  
  
“Do you remember it?” Cloud asked him. “Being that small?”  
  
Squall’s eyes glazed over momentarily, indicating yes. Cloud only knew a thimble-full; that there was an orphanage, that at first, after Cid, only Aerith could get him to speak to them. “Not really,” he said.  
  
“That’s fine,” Cloud said. He touched Squall lightly, barely by a fingertip, and drew him away from the door. “You’ve always been the forgetful one.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
His restlessness was an immutable thing, spindly with claws. He had very little in the way of inner demons, and the skeletons in his closet were even fewer, if he’d had any at all. But insomnia was a beast—his beast—and still now he was incapable of fighting against it. No matter what he did, Cloud could not seem to keep his eyes closed for longer than several seconds.  
  
Some nights he envied the boys for the easy way sleep found them. When they were littler—toddlers, ducklings, perfectly-sized to fit comfortably cradled to his chest—Cloud welcomed the nighttime for the routinely way they would eventually tip-toe into his and Squall’s room and whine to be helped up onto the bed. Back then, the boys knew nothing about schoolboy embarrassment; they oozed into his arms like there was no better place to call home, and tangled their hands into his hair. Roxas favored his left, liked to run the pad of his thumb over the curve of Cloud’s earring. Sora held himself squashed between his and Squall’s arms, and over the course of the night would wriggle himself diagonally set, so that Cloud could drum his fingers over Sora’s knee while Sora buried his nose in the crook of Squall’s shoulder. There his breath whuffled, and there in the morning would be a smear of drool, still-clung by a wet line to the corner of his mouth.  
  
Somewhere along the line he’d blinked and they were eleven, and no longer clambered in, two together, little hands tightly held.  
  
Against him Squall stirred. “I can hear you thinking.”  
  
“Why would I do that?”  
  
“Crazy, huh? I can’t believe it either.” Cloud felt the mattress dip. His eyes shuttered as Squall glanced briefly over his shoulder. “What’re you thinking about?”  
  
“Can’t remember,” Cloud lied. “Probably nothing.”  
  
“Mmm,” Squall said. It didn’t matter whether or not he believed him. Cloud lied about these things the same way Squall lied about being stressed. “Close your eyes and think of something nice.”  
  
“Who am I, Sora?”  
  
“Couldn’t be,” Squall snorted. “You’re not my son.”  
  
After a beat, Squall’s hand reached over, brushed over the exposed skin of Cloud’s arm.  
  
“I’m not cold,” said Cloud.  
  
“Wasn’t asking,” said Squall back, though his hand moved like clockwork, up and down. His hand was warm on the chill of Cloud’s skin.  
  
All the fight left him, half-whistled out through a sigh. His felt his breath catch and bloom in the fabric of Squall’s shirt, blossoming all over. He imagined a winter air all around them. He imagined Squall with his shirt off, all bare, cold-pinkened skin. He imagined his breath white, thicker than vapor, stilled by Squall’s back. He imagined it spreading across Squall’s skin, gliding over the ridges of his shoulder blades. He enjoyed being the big spoon for this; he was no artist, couldn’t draw a single legible thing, but like this he could make a canvas from Squall’s skin, and trace landscapes out of nothing.  
  
“Sing the lyrics of every song from Queen’s Greatest Hits, in order,” murmured Squall, turning winter back into spring.  
  
“Right now?”  
  
“We can do one line each.”  
  
“Jesus, Squall,” Cloud said.  
  
But Squall had already gotten started with Bohemian Rhapsody, so Cloud was left with little choice but to ask him if this was just fantasy.  
  
“Caught in a landslide.”  
  
“No escape from re-a-li-ty,” chortled Cloud.  
  
“No laughing, Strife,” Squall chided solemnly. “This is very important.”  
  
“All right,” Cloud said, still laughing, forehead pressed to the nape of Squall’s neck.  
  
And made it halfway through You’re My Best Friend before falling right asleep.  
  
  
-  
  
  
The boys had the habit of laying low whenever his flareups got bad. There wasn’t a rule about it—Cloud was never big on rules, and Cid always said he liked that about him—it was just how things were. As children, quiet was harder; Sora liked to shout, and Roxas often ended up shouting just because, but now that they were teenagers, it was easier. They had their games and their computer and most things had jacks just for earphones these days, so Cloud spent most of the worst of it in exactly the silence he liked.  
  
There was nothing rote about his flareups; sometimes he trembled, sometimes he went cold, sometimes he burned so hot he’d sweat right through his clothes, and sometimes, when it was particularly bad, he’d blink right out of it and feel everything else all at once. The only consistent thing about it was the blurriness that preceded it and the blurriness that followed for a few days afterwards.  
  
“Pa, look,” Roxas said one day. He bounded into their room, a bottle of gel in one hand and a brush in the other. “This time, I tried it with the stuff you use, and—pa?”  
  
It wasn’t that Cloud forgot them—couldn’t, rather; there was no way he could forget either of them. He knew every line of their silhouettes, boy-shaped or baby-shaped. It was just that he couldn’t remember for the life of him when it was Roxas had done that to his hair. He reached out a hand to touch it, to feel it feather-soft between his fingers. But the strands were coarser, different-textured. Unfamiliar.  
  
Roxas‘s eyes were wide and expectant, though now there was a glumness to the tilt of his mouth.  “You didn’t change your mind, did you?”  
  
I’m still waking up, he wanted to say, gently. He knew he knew this; Roxas’s hair was blond now, brassy and mostly uneven, but there was a part of him that was already familiar with the color of it. Still his fingers trembled slightly. The last time he’d blinked so roughly, he’d forgotten nearly the entirety of one of the boys’ school plays.  
  
“I didn’t,” he said, playing along. “It’s just, with all that product in your hair...”  
  
Roxas grinned now, invigorated. “I look just like you. Right? Right?”  
  
He didn’t, not really; Roxas’s hair was closer to copper while Cloud’s was more flaxen than gold. Roxas’s nose was a button while Cloud’s was pointy, flecked with blink-and-miss freckles. The shapes of their eyes were different, and so was the color, but—but—  
  
Cloud dipped his fingers into some of the hair wax and teased them through Roxas’s crown. Inside his chest his heart was soaring. When he finished with him, Roxas was pink-cheeked and beaming.  
  
“There,” Cloud said, spiking his hair just so. He brushed his knuckles along Roxas’s cheek and smiled until his chest hurt. “You're all mine.”  
  
  
-  
  
  
Falling in love with Squall was easy. Cloud might’ve fallen for him entirely by accident several times over.  
  
One night he asked him if he remembered college.  
  
There was no sound in their room but the patter of raindrops against the window. They’d long ago swapped out their old, crooked analog clock, the one that ticked. Cloud had made it in woodshop back in high school, but now they owned a boring, digital thing, the same as anybody else. He kept it at Squall’s bedside table, such was his sudden conviction if he couldn’t see the time, he’d be able to fall asleep more easily. There were no results to show for it, but Squall didn’t mind, and always kept the stupid thing angled so the numbers were obscured from Cloud’s view.  
  
He didn’t know what hour it was, only that the moon outside hung crescent-shaped and high. When Squall glanced to his right, he made a face like he’d bore witness to a ridiculous thing.  
  
“Depends,” he hedged. “Why?”  
  
They never spoke about it, the months between the time Squall had told him he was going to adopt and when at last he brought the boys home. Cloud was irascible then. Hyped up and uncertain. His heartbeat was a rabbit’s, running up too fast. Then, they’d flitted between being glued at the hip and being overly wary of each other, over-delicate. For a time they’d been so mindful of the spaces between them that it had made Cloud even angrier and Squall even more distant. Squall rarely spoke of his insecurities, but their early twenties was one of them, Cloud knew.  
  
”You drove me crazy then, do you remember?”  
  
Squall barely reacted but for a muscle that jumped in his cheek. “According to you, I always do.”  
  
“Well,” Cloud said, “you know what they say.”  
  
“What?” asked Squall even more warily.  
  
“Birds of a feather flock together?”  
  
“Oh, good. I was afraid you’d say some shit like ‘opposites attract.’”  
  
“Some shit?” Cloud snickered.  
  
“Some shit,” Squall affirmed. His shoulders were no longer rigid or tense; they were now merely planes of skin. He said nothing as Cloud twined their fingers together, though there was something warm about his eyes when Cloud stole off his ring and slipped it around his thumb. Squall brought their joined hands to his mouth, kissed a pointy knuckle before biting lightly down in reproach. “See? Stealing my shit. Driving me crazy. We’re not opposites at all.”  
  
”Don’t be disgusting, Squall.”  
  
Squall bit him again, then turned around so he lay on his favored side. He gave a sigh that Cloud knew signaled sleep. Cloud kissed the ridges along his spine, imagined he could count every bone. Asleep, Squall’s breaths were slow and heavy, not terribly unlike a child’s.  
  
A strange urge overcame him suddenly. He rose from the mattress, careful not to wake the bed’s only slumbering occupant, and moved to the window seat. There he moved the curtain just so, and opened the window just a crack, enough to wriggle his fingers through and feel the rain on his skin.  
  
He remembered—or dreamed about—rain. Cloud, and Squall, and a rainy, windy, overcast day. It didn’t matter which it was, only that Cloud imagined—remembered—them young, still awkwardly, adolescently slender. Whatever age they were, they’d stood together under a torrent. In that odd, delightful memory—dream—Squall watched, laughing, as Cloud spread his fingers and arms and craned his neck up until he was soaked. Even though the only droplets touching him now were gentle, June-light, little more than a passing of clouds, it felt almost the same.  
  
  
-  
  
  
(There were a lot of things he couldn’t understand. Half of the lectures he attended anymore, for one, and Squall, of course, for another. He could be with him for years if their relationship continued to work out the way it currently seemed to be, and Cloud doubted he would ever grasp the way that ridiculous mind worked. He imagined it filled with gears and cogs, shiny-bright and oil-slick. Not a single thing out of place. Everything clicking and whirring as it should.  
  
“So take a break,” Squall shrugged, parroting what everyone else had told him, albeit in simpler paraphrase.  
  
“Oh, fuck off,” Cloud spat, heavy with exhaustion. “Not you too?”  
  
“Glad to know I’m the last one you came to for advice,” Squall said dryly, without ire, and picked up one of the books Cloud had launched clean against the wall.  
  
“Everyone else was closer,” Cloud muttered.  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“And, they said more than four words.”  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
More specifically, Zack had said, Hmm maybe we ought to find you a new game plan, Besides, it’s fine to feel that way, hell I think you’d be crazy if you didn’t feel like exploding at least once  
  
And Cloud had said, It isn’t just the once, though, it’s every-fucking-day  
  
And Aerith had said, Oh, Cloud, you really have got to go easier on yourself  
  
And Tifa had said, when it was just the two of them tucked away in the dustiest part of Hollow Bastion U’s largest library, I’ve been worrying about you, you know? So this time let me worry, and let me help  
  
And Cloud had said, dumbly, to all of them, But how?  
  
Cloud first looked to Squall, who was busy scribbling away at something with his usual diligence, and then at the large textbook now resting neatly on the table.  
  
It wasn’t fair, how Squall managed his classes so much better than Cloud did. Squall had a system. Some nights he downed inhuman amounts of coffee and maybe locked Irvine out of their shared apartment before sending Cloud back to his own, trembling slightly from the caffeine. And some mornings he began the day at 4, ran around campus for an hour until his shirt was sweat-damp all over and would say nothing else for the rest of the day, too engrossed in his own papers to think about anything else. Still he picked up the phone when Cid came calling, and ground his temples when Yuffie did the same, begging to help her with her homework, Puhleeze it’ll only take TEN MINUTES Squally PUH-LEEZE, nevermind that he‘d always end up on the line with her for at least an hour, carefully explaining things just the way she needed to hear it.  
  
Cloud, on the other hand, ignored everybody’s phone calls and voice mail and walked aimlessly around, often cutting class for days in a row, all because he had no idea how to go about things.  
  
“What,” Squall said, incredulously, “and you think I’m the normal one?”  
  
 Cloud bristled self-consciously. “Aren’t you? At least you’re going to class.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Squall said, unfairly easily. “You’re stressed so you cut class a bit and freaked out some. Sounds pretty standard to me.”  
  
“I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know if I’m just not interested in what I’m studying anymore, or if I just—if my brain just—if the Materia or the ‘stigma—or if—“  
  
“If you don’t know how to do it, then maybe don’t? Until you remember again. Or until you find something better you like doing.”  
  
The room rang oddly quiet now that Squall’d stopped writing. He held the point of his pen pressed to a pad of sticky notes, and was watching Cloud with surprising gentleness.  
  
“If you ask me,” he said, quietly, “you haven’t been happy for a while.”  
  
“It’s called midterms,” Cloud muttered, angry with himself.  
  
“Cloud,” Squall repeated. “For a _while.”_  
  
It wasn’t the geostigma—it was never about or because of the geostigma—nevermind that it didn’t help with simple everyday things. And even if it was—even though it wasn’t—Cloud didn’t like to think about it. He’d just stopped enjoying school, that was all.  
  
Unmoored now, and messily rattled, Cloud felt his feet gravitate him towards Squall. He sat curled inwards, sinking into the couch, and held Squall by the wrist, unable to handle more contact than that. He pressed his thumb into the skin there, into the hollow beside the tendon, and counted the beats of Squall’s pulse. In his head he imagined Squall’s heartbeat and counted them silently, in pairs of one-two, one-two.  
  
“What are you even writing?” he eventually asked. He peered through his fingers toward the bright yellow sticky-note pad Squall kept propped against a knee.  
  
“Nothing really,” Squall said, but showed him.  
  
Squall’s handwriting was sharp and familiar. Cloud could never forget it, because it hadn’t changed since they were fourteen. His own lacked that sort of permanence. He wrote slanted one day, perfectly straight the next. Wrote cursive, print. He took the pad from Squall’s hand and flipped through it. Squall’d written, on various different stickies, the usual reminders for Cloud’s doctor’s appointments, and materia refills, but now also, newly inscribed with drawn-on boxes and underlined capitals, instructions for study breaks at specific times, and library meetups, and missives to go for a jog around the campus garden ‘just to clear that ridiculous head of yours.’  
  
“Zack said you might need a game plan,” Squall explained, eyes averted. “I can sit through your Monday lectures with you if you need me to, and as for the rest, I still need to double check what course drop schedules are, but—“  
  
“—Squall, Jesus,” Cloud breathed, interrupting him entirely. Something bubbled in his throat. It could have been anything; laughter, incredulity, adoration.  
  
”I’m not trying to be overbearing or anything—“  
  
“—You think I’m mad at you?”  
  
“Mad?” Squall said, blinking. “I was thinking along the lines of annoyed. Dunno. I just—“  
  
“You might be more annoyed with me if I don’t follow through with half of this, because fuck if I can promise that.”  
  
“Don’t expect you to,” Squall said, just as honestly. “Just thought it might be helpful.”  
  
Cloud flipped through the sticky-note pad again. “Are these checkboxes?”  
  
This time Squall pinkened slightly. “Feels good to check things off.”  
  
“We have very different ideas of what does or doesn’t feel good.”  
  
“Well,” Squall muttered, “Not too different.”  
  
“Shut up,” Cloud said, still with mirth, too pleased to feel embarrassed, and stood up from the couch. Without effort, he tugged Squall up to his feet.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“It says go for a run, right?”  
  
Squall glanced out towards the window. “It’s pouring out.”  
  
“We’ve still got legs. Get up.”  
  
“Unbelievable,” Squall sighed. He followed after Cloud anyway.  
  
The street glistened with puddles. There wasn’t a single other person outside. The alder tree beside Cloud’s apartment stood unbothered by the rain. Its leaves and branches moved this way and that, trembling frenetically from the wind. They ran first beneath it, then braved the full force of the downpour.  
  
Within seconds their clothes clung to their skin. Cloud couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this. He kicked the full of his shoe into a puddle, and kicked some more until Squall kicked some water back at him.  
  
“Did we ever do this before?” Cloud yelled.  
  
“What?”  
  
Cloud kicked some more water at him. “Did we do this? When we were kids?”  
  
“Hell, no,” Squall yelled back. “Always hated the rain.”  
  
Cloud threw his head back, laughing with all his belly. “Jesus, Squall, you hate so many things.”  
  
“Not really. You just never ask about the things I like.”  
  
“Well,” said Cloud, splashing around still. “What do you like?”  
  
Suddenly Squall said nothing, just watched him for a moment before laughing. Cloud wondered if Squall would’ve kissed him if they weren’t outside like this.  
  
“Do you mind it, that I forget so many things?” Cloud asked, spurred on by the rain. Things began to leak from him, right out of his pores. Fear first, fear that Squall wasn’t enjoying this. Curiosity after.  
  
“Why would I mind?”  
  
“Dunno—“ except that he did know, because he knew he minded it, resented his own memory when he was particularly upset. “—you never did all that stuff for me until we, you know, got together.”  
  
“Never knew you needed reminders,” Squall said easily, watching him still. “Would’ve done it if I knew.”  
  
“You’re just so—so—,” Cloud said. Uncertainty escaped him now. “You have everything all figured out. Even when you’re stressed or overworked. Everything you do makes sense.”  
  
There was no hint of sun anywhere, and the rain by all rights should have made him resemble little else than a drowned animal. Still, something about the wetness, and the look in his eyes, and the way his hair lay plastered, nearly black, right against his soaked skin prettily illuminated the little smile on his face. “Don’t be stupid,” Squall said, reaching for his hand. “I’d be a mess without you.”)


End file.
